Analysis of three-neutrino oscillations in the full mixing angle space

Abstract

We use a model, with no CP violation, of the world's neutrino oscillation data, excluding the LSND experiments, and search the full parameter space ($0\leq\theta_{12} \le \pi/2$; $-\pi/2 \le \theta_{13} \le \pi/2$; and 0\leq\theta_{23} \le \pi /2$) for the best fit values of the mixing angles and mass-squared differences. We find that the mixing angle $\theta_{13}$ is bounded by $-0.15<\theta_{13}<0.20$ with an absolute minimum at $\theta_{13}=0.12$ and a local minimum at $-0.04$. The importance of the negative $\theta_{13}$ region and this structure in the chi-square space has heretofore been overlooked because the factorization approximation commonly employed yields oscillation probabilities that are a function of $\sin^2\theta_{13}$.